Civilization Beyond the Stars - discontinued

16

A/N This chapter is seriously unedited, I've not even proofread it, so pls ignore the typos and spelling errors...

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Turned out that we all were a special group that the grand master himself would manage.

Led into a secluded study, he explained to us that to be chosen to be in this group has not been because of our abilities or that we are better than the population but simply because of a play of fate that led us onto such paths of life that require both, a lot of sacrifices and a lot of courage.

What a morale booster! Hear the sarcasm...

Thankfully, the pep talk ended here and he proceeded to the main topic. The curriculum, the tests and courses. It made me mentally yawn. Though I heard attentively because this was not what we were taught in stupid schools back at Earth.

The course here was primarly focused on teaching us what we would actually use in life. Skills and values, a perfect blend of both theory and practicals, the mind of a student was allowed to explore and come to conclusions and theories and yet they were reined in.

At least that's what I thought till the classes started and maybe even afterwards when I wasn't working my ass off managing to juggle two school lifes and two social lifes that were a stark contrast to each other, yet similar in many ways.

Michael and Hillian (surprisingly) became my bestest friends. Though both of them weren't that fond of each other, I became a sort of bridge in between them and our trio became close.Though the five of us were friends, the girls stuck together.

Instead of being given specialized classes like the others, we were taught by each of the masters, the basics of each specialization. They said that for the positions we were being trained, at some point we would require them all.

Though I think it wasn't fair that we had to cope with five courses while other did only one. 

The first round of assessments came and went. To make things worse, their timing clashed with those of my boards on earth. The results of boards wasn't out yet but in the exams at Teras academy, I fared badly, coming last in class in the theory and fourth by a score of .5 in the practicals.

Only Pansy did worse than me in practicals but then she came third in class in the theory...

Hillian came out to be the bright child among us, with a neck to neck competition between Ferelith and Michael with one beating the other by a hair margin.

Handling two lives was taking a toll on me. Both physically and emotionally. 

I started to go to sleep at 8:30 at night (much to the surprise of my parents who in turn started sending my sister to bed early too) woke up around midnight barely catching three hours of sleep, attended TAP (a short form for Teras Academy of apprenticeship, don't ask me where the P came from, I have no idea!), returned back around 6am and went to school. 

I juggled homework and schoolwork like a mad clown and barely salvaged time to study for tests. Left the soccer team and often ended up doing TAP assignments in my english class.

I found a life-saver in Mecranin, a medication prescribed by a TAP infirmary doctor when I was caught dozing off in the Diplomacy and Admin class for the second time.

In simple words, I was pushing myself beyond my limits, and my dependency on Mecranin only increased as I started taking the dosage four times a day instead of the prescribed two.

Still, my performance gradually slipped.

My friends noticed, they helped too, but even they couldn't do anything about my worsening condition except offering to do my written work for me while I caught a snore, which I gladly accepted.